Telco Cloud providers must partner with IT services players: Ovum

Telcos offering Cloud services should partner with an existing IT services provider rather than going it alone, according to Ovum.

In a new report, Enabling Telco Cloud Services, the analyst firm states that there are many operational hurdles for telcos moving to offer Cloud services.

Ovum analyst and report author, Mark Giles, said collaboration and partnerships with IT providers could help telcos overcome such challenges.

“In addition to helping them overcome their internal operational challenges, a partnership can help telcos to expand their number of sales channels and profit from an association with a premium IT services brand,” Giles said.

Aligning with a Cloud provider could also help cement a telco’s brand in the Cloud space, Giles said.

“Aside from a perceived lack of brand identity in the supply of IT services, obstacles such as bringing internal network and IT teams together, enabling sales teams, and ensuring that OSS and BSS systems can deliver on cloud’s on-demand nature must be overcome,” he said.

“The pace of innovation required for cloud services is very different from traditional network services and requires telcos to drastically reduce their time to market.

“While this is a challenge for the back office, it also raises questions as to how telcos price and monitor the profitability of these services.”

Optus last month announced the launch of its Cloud based offering, claiming Optus OfficeApps would target small to medium businesses.

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